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Will the Neil deGrasse Tyson of medicine please stand up?

There are many inspirational names in modern-day healthcare and, partially due to reform, room for even more. But a commenter on Reddit posed the question of whether there is anyone who is as well-known and charismatic a spokesperson for medicine as Neil deGrasse Tyson is for astrophysics. (Perhaps medicine is too specialized to have one emergent voice, but physicists would probably claim the same.) Now, with the recently announced news of Tyson’s Cosmos remake, I can’t shake the commenter’s question:

Who is the Neil deGrasse Tyson of medicine?

While it’s hard to say medicine has one representative face or household name as recognizable as Tyson’s, here are some heavyweight contenders:

TEDTalks, just left a super-visible position as US Surgeon General, an advocate for health medicine who built a rural health clinic then rebuilt it after Katrina, rumored to have a Congressional race on the brain . . . .

Almost 1.7 million Twitter followers, regular contributor to CNN, talks about pop med topics like medical marijuana and was even considered as a Surgeon General candidate. (But does he cater too much to public interest and not enough toward science?)

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By Lindsey Alexander

Lindsey Alexander is an Indiana-based freelance writer and editor covering the medical device industry. She earned a degree in journalism from Indiana University and a master's from Purdue.Visit website | More posts by Author